Them or Us (22 page)

31

LLEWELLYN AND CHANDRA ARE
whisked away, and Healey returns to the van. I’m left alone with Swales. He seems almost as bemused by events as I am, and I get the distinct impression he’s here just to make up the numbers. We watch from a ground-floor window as the new arrivals quickly set up camp. Some build fires and erect temporary shelters. Others are dispatched into what’s left of Norwich, presumably to look for fuel and supplies and anything else of value. They’re working
together,
no hint of aggression or any pecking order.

Swales notices a line forming outside a mess tent. He heads straight for it, and I follow him. We’re given a little food without question—some kind of bland, rice-based paste and a few thin crackers—and a mug of coffee each and left to our own devices again. It’s not great tasting, but it’s not half-cooked dog, either, and I manage to swallow a few mouthfuls. We sit on a bench in a sheltered alcove just outside the museum building, out of the way of everyone else but still close enough to watch. It’s funny, less than an hour ago Swales was definitely one of “them,” but now we’re thick as thieves, relatively comfortable in each other’s company because there’s someone new in town, neither of us having any immediate desire to mix with these strangers.

There’s controlled activity all around us still as these people, whoever they are, continue to establish their makeshift base. Each person is carrying out their allotted task without question or complaint, people who were obviously fighters working alongside people who obviously weren’t … it’s a pale imitation, but it’s almost like things used to be. This is like what I saw in Southwold, albeit on a much grander scale. So what’s the connection? Are they all stealing from Hinchcliffe?

“You gonna eat that?” Swales asks, nudging me with his elbow and nodding at my practically untouched food.

“You want it?”

He snatches the plate and starts scooping up the rice paste with clumsy fingers, smearing nearly as much of it over his face as he manages to get into his mouth.

“Good?”

“Good,” he answers, wolfing down a cracker. “I’ll eat anything, me,” he continues, showering me with crumbs.

“So I can see.”

Swales obviously isn’t the sharpest tool in the box, but his strength and size (and no doubt his track record and ongoing appetite for violence) have helped him become one of Hinchcliffe’s “elite.” He’s strong, impressionable, and, I expect, easily manipulated—perfect fighter fodder.

“So what do you think about all this, then?” he asks.

That’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer. These days it seems that something happens every few minutes that skews my perspective on everything again. Everything feels fluid. Nothing sits still.

“Depends what ‘all this’ is, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t get you.”

“First I thought we were out plane spotting, then I thought Llewellyn was going to kill me, and now I’m sitting having lunch with half an army. I’ll be honest with you, Swales, I don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on anymore.”

“I got told nothing. Llewellyn said he’d got a job for me, that’s all. Didn’t know nothing about all this.”

“So what do you think about it all?”

Swales has a naïveté and innocence that may well prove to be his undoing. He talks candidly, barely even thinking about what he’s saying. Still, that probably makes him more honest and reliable than most of the backstabbing bastards Hinchcliffe surrounds himself with.

“Got to be a good thing, ain’t it?”

“Suppose.”

“This is like things used to be.”

“I guess.”

He pauses to eat more food. Then, when his second plate’s almost clear, he speaks again.

“You know what I used to do for a job, Danny?”

“No.”

“I used to flip burgers ’cause that was the only job I could find. There’s plenty about the old times I miss—”

“But not flipping burgers?”

“Definitely
not
flipping burgers!” He laughs. “I miss my mom and my brother, even though he turned out to be one of them. Miss my buddies … Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t go back for any money, but I wouldn’t say I’m happy with the way everything is, you know?”

“Like what?”

“Like the fighting. You do it ’cause you have to, but that don’t make it right. You can’t just kick back and relax like you used to. You’ve always got to be on the lookout. Llewellyn says you got to stay one step ahead of everybody else, ’cause the one guy you’re not watching is the one who’ll creep up behind you and kill you.”

“So what do you think about that? Is he right?”

“Suppose. I’m just tired of it, that’s all. But what’s happening here, what that Chris Ankin guy’s doing, that sounds like a better option to me. Llewellyn says Ankin’s gonna see all of us right in the end.”

Poor bastard, he really does believe everything he’s told. Then again, I think to myself as I look around this place, maybe I’m the one who’s wrong. He may have been a long way from the front line of battle, but Ankin, more than anyone else, has been in control from the start. He’s not like Hinchcliffe. Hinchcliffe was just someone who just happened to be in the right place at the right time and took advantage of what he found to force himself into power. Ankin is different. And to have kept control for so long through so much, he must have done the right thing by his people. There’s a world of difference between the organized, uniformed people here and Hinchcliffe’s army of a couple of hundred individual fighters. Johannson, Thacker, and many others have proved how tenuous positions of power have become, and yet this weak-looking, white-haired politician has outlasted them all.

Maybe Peter Sutton was wrong and our species
can
take a step back from the abyss? Who the hell am I kidding? I’ll believe it when I see it.

“It’ll take more than this bunch to make everything right again.”

“That’s the best part,” Swales says excitedly, “there
is
more than this bunch. That’s what Llewellyn thinks, anyway. He says there’s thousands more of them on the way to Norwich. Thousands of them!”

32

AN UNEXPECTEDLY COMFORTABLE NIGHT’S
sleep on the floor in a quiet corner of the museum is rudely interrupted at first light. Despite the fact that the first thing I see is Llewellyn’s foul, scowling face glaring down at me, I immediately feel different today. Optimism is too strong a word, but there’s no denying that, unexpectedly, things look more hopeful this morning than they have in months. The illusion doesn’t last long, when I start coughing my guts up and I remember what Rona Scott told me. If really this does turn out to be the dawn of a brave new world, I’m probably not going to get to see very much of it.

Llewellyn is chaperoning me this morning. I manage to get outside to take a piss in the half inch of snow that’s fallen overnight, but before I’ve even finished shaking myself dry, he’s already dragging me back indoors. He seems uncharacteristically anxious as he herds me into a large, busy room on the ground floor of the museum and tells me to sit down and wait. I don’t have to wait long to find out why.

In a week that has been crammed with bizarre events, this takes the cake. The events of the last few days in particular have been unbelievably surreal, like a crazy, barely controlled chain reaction, and it feels like the more I try to shut myself off and pull away from the madness, the worse it gets. Being forced to contribute to Hinchcliffe’s fucked-up breeding program was bad enough, but even that paled into insignificance alongside the unspeakable things that Peter Sutton showed me underground. In the space of a couple of days I’ve been told I’m dying; I’ve watched Rufus, the closest thing I had to a friend, be killed in front of me for no reason other than Hinchcliffe’s spite and frustration; I’ve convinced myself I was going to be executed … and now this? Here I am, in a dust-covered museum café, sitting across a table from Chris Ankin.
The
Chris Ankin. The ex–government official who broadcast that message I heard so long ago: the call to arms for all us fighters who, until he dared to speak out, had felt persecuted and alone. The man whose face I saw on a computer screen in the back of a van when my life changed direction again. The man who, by word of mouth alone it seemed, managed to coordinate an invisible army that marched into Unchanged settlements and stirred them up so much that they imploded and tore themselves apart.
The
Chris Ankin. The closest thing to a true leader we’ve had. Until now I’d never actually stopped to think about how much I owe this man. Without his words I’d have remained alone and unprepared for the onset of war. Without his planning and foresight I’d never have made it back into the city, I’d probably never have learned to hold the Hate, and, most importantly, I would never have shared those last few precious minutes with Lizzie and Ellis. It seems that whenever I cross paths with Ankin, everything changes. Today that makes me feel nervous. Why is he here, and why does he suddenly want to talk to me?

As usual I’m like a fifth wheel and the longer I have to wait, the worse I feel. Right now Ankin is busy talking to someone. The guy crouching down next to him is clean-shaven and relatively smartly dressed. It’s strange; I look around at the people who arrived here with Ankin and in some ways it’s almost as if I’m looking at another race, another species even. Without realizing I’m doing it I make a pathetic attempt to straighten my long, straggly hair with the tips of my fingers, as if it’s going to make a difference. These people are far better organized than anyone else I’ve seen since the war ended, better fed and fitter, too. Most of them wear something resembling a uniform, they have a clear command structure that appears to work, they are regimented and controlled, and they each have clearly defined jobs to do. In comparison to the military forces I remember from before the war, even the Unchanged, they’re still amateurish and ill disciplined, but they appear so much more capable than anyone else I’ve come across since the bombs were dropped. I thought that what I’d seen in Lowestoft was as close to civilization as we were ever going to get, but these people are on another level altogether. They remind me of the ragtag, cobbled-together armies I used to see in TV footage from war-torn African and Middle Eastern conflicts a long time ago: the warlord ruled militias that used to butcher, rape, and pillage their way through starving, nomadic populations, diverting aid cash and using drug money to keep themselves stocked up with weapons. Except, incredibly, these people seem
less
aggressive. They’re armed to the teeth, and each person here (me included) has probably carried out more killings and been involved in more atrocities than any of those so-called freedom fighters I remember, but now they seem calm, assured, and in complete control.

The man talking to Ankin stands up and disappears, and Ankin finally turns his attention to me. I feel my pulse quicken.

“Danny McCoyne,” he says. “Llewellyn’s told me a lot about you.”

“Has he?” I reply quickly, silently hoping that the bit he
hasn’t
heard about me includes the time I spent underground with more than thirty Unchanged recently without killing them.

“He says you’re a useful man to have around.”

“He’s got a strange way of showing it. I thought he was going to kill me yesterday.”

Ankin smiles broadly. “We all have to keep our cards close to our vests these days, Danny. Your friend Hinchcliffe wouldn’t have taken it well if he knew Llewellyn was working for me.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I tell him, “and by the way, in spite of what you might have heard, Hinchcliffe’s definitely no friend of mine.”

“You know him well, though.”

“Better than most, I suppose. Not through choice.”

“I understand that. Kind of an awkward character, by all accounts.”

“Kind of a cunt, actually.”

“Indeed. Anyway, back to you. I’m sure you’ve got more than a few questions you’d like to ask about what you’ve seen.”

He smiles at me—a glimpse of an obviously fake and well-rehearsed politician’s smile from way back—and he studies my face intently. The power of his stare and his undeniably authoritarian presence is such that everything else seems to fade away and lose focus until it feels like we’re the only people left in the room.

“I’d like to know where you came from and where you’ve been. Why’s it taken you so long to get here?”

He thinks before answering, still staring at me, still smiling. “Tell me, Danny,” he finally says, leaning forward and, again like an old-time politician, avoiding answering my question by asking another of his own, “how much do you know about this strange new world of ours?”

“Not a lot. I know some of what’s happening around Lowestoft, not much else.”

“That’s about as much as I’d expect. Don’t you think it’s strange how much things have changed over the last year or so? I’m guessing that this time last year you were probably stuck in a rut like most of the rest of us, just going through the motions and getting through life as best you could, one day at a time.”

How right he is …

“Now you can do pretty much what you want, when you want, can’t you? Your priorities have completely changed, of course, and you have to work harder to get the basics like food and water and such stuff, but you’re your own master now. You’re less restricted and held back than you used to be.”

Apart from the specter of Hinchcliffe that looms over me constantly, he’s right again, although he’s not telling me anything I don’t already know.

“But there’s an obvious paradox here, isn’t there?” he announces.

“Is there?”

“Yes. Your world’s suddenly gotten a lot smaller, hasn’t it? A year ago you could switch on your TV or go online and you could find out in seconds what was happening pretty much anywhere around the world. You could send an e-mail or pick up the phone and talk instantly to people in other countries.”

“Right, and now we only know what’s happening immediately around us,” I interrupt, anticipating what I think he’s going to say next. “Anything could be happening elsewhere, but if we can’t see it or hear it and we can’t walk there or drive to it, we probably wouldn’t ever know anything about it. All the borders and barriers have been broken down, but we can’t get close enough to them to get over to the other side.”

“Exactly,” he says, leaning back in his chair, wagging his finger at me. “Llewellyn was right about you. You really do get it!”

That makes me feel uneasy again. I’ve forgotten how I’m supposed to respond to compliments. These days, on the very rare occasions someone says something positive about you, it’s inevitably followed by either a request for help or an attempt on your life. I’m hoping Ankin’s going to ask me to help him, because if things get heavy around here, I’m fucked.

“What point are you making?” I ask.

“Tell me how you got here,” he replies, still managing to avoid my questions.

“What, how I got to Norwich?” I ask stupidly. He shakes his head.

“No, how you got through the war. How you managed to survive for this long.”

“Just did what I had to, I guess. I just kept fighting.”

“There are plenty of people who just kept fighting, and most of them are dead. What makes you any different?”

“Luck of the draw,” I answer, not sure I want to give anything else away.

“I don’t believe you. There’s got to be more to it than that. Look at what happened to the Brutes—now that’s the result of just fighting, and you’re clearly no Brute, Danny.”

“I caught a few breaks, had some close calls…”

Ankin’s clearly growing tired of my bullshit.

“Llewellyn says you can hold the Hate.”

“For what it’s worth,” I answer. “Not much call for it these days, now the Unchanged are gone.”

“True, but having that ability says something about the kind of person you are. It shows that you’re less impulsive than most, that you’ve got self-control and willpower. Tell me, Danny, where did you learn to do it?”

“Came across a guy called Sahota. Or rather, he came across me.”

“Ahh … Sahota! I had a feeling you were one of his.”

“One of his?”

“From his ‘reeducation’ programs.”

“Is that what he called them?”

“So you were sent into one of the refugee camps?”

My mind suddenly fills with unwanted memories of those nightmare days last summer.

“I’ve never been through anything like it,” I tell him. “It was incredible … horrific…”

“Even so, you did it,” he says, “and you survived it. No matter how bad an ordeal it was, you managed to get through it and come out the other side, and in relatively decent shape, too, considering what happened. Seems to me, Danny, that if you managed to get out of that almighty mess in one piece, then Llewellyn’s right, you’re definitely someone worth having on our side.”

His smooth talk is really starting to unnerve me.

“Look, just cut the crap, what do you want?”

Ankin grins at me and avoids answering yet another question.

“We were just talking about how much the world’s changed, and how it feels like everything’s become smaller and more confined. Our needs and priorities have changed, too. I think that as a race we’ve reached a pivotal point in our development and—”

“Spare me the bullshit and get to the point.”

He sighs. “I think we’ve reached a make-or-break moment. You told me that all you know now is Lowestoft. Well, let me broaden your horizons a little.”

“Go on.”

“When the enemy refugee camps imploded, then exploded, much of the country became uninhabitable. Virtually every major city center was destroyed, most of them completely vaporized, some by us, some by them. As you’d expect, the radiation and pollution have spread since then. Even more people have died, and even more of the land has been contaminated. I’ve been trying to coordinate what’s left and ascertain how much of the country is actually still inhabitable.”

“And how much is that?”

“Less than you might have thought. It’s pretty much just the extremities now. Apart from Edinburgh and Glasgow, much of Scotland escaped the worst of it, and parts of North Wales, too. Cornwall and some parts of Devon are livable, but pretty much everything else, from Leeds and Manchester down all the way to the south coast, is dead. Now, all that might not be as big a problem as it sounds, because as you’ve probably noticed, there aren’t that many of us left alive. There’s no way of knowing exactly how many, but our best estimations are a million at most, maybe only half that number. So what I’m trying to do is unify the remaining population and bring it together.”

“Good luck with that.” I laugh, not even bothering to try to hide my skepticism. “You’d be the first person in history to manage it.”

He ignores me and continues. “The radiation makes travel difficult at best, and getting cross-country is next to impossible. You either need to fly, go the long way around, or choose one of the less polluted regions and move through it damn fast. Sahota’s actually over on the west coast as we speak, negotiating with the Welsh.”

“Negotiating with the Welsh! Christ, it all sounds a bit tribal.”

“Yes, that’s exactly how things will be if we don’t do something about it. Someone needs to make a stand and try to bring some order to what’s left before we completely lose control, and that’s why I’m here. London and the southeast is dead, but where we are now, from the outermost edge of the East Midlands across to the east coast, and from Hull right down to Cambridge, is one of the largest inhabitable areas remaining. We’re in control of most of it now.”

“Try telling that to Hinchcliffe.”

“Exactly, and that’s my problem. We’ve known about him for a while and we’ve been happy to let him get on with what he’s been doing. He’s managed to build up quite a little empire for himself.”

“He has, and he’s not about to let anyone come in and take it over. You do realize that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, and I wouldn’t expect any different. A man in his position is naturally going to want to protect his investment and not give up power. Which is why I didn’t actually say anything about taking over. The best option for all concerned would be to get him on our side.”